Building Dwelling Thinking

1 Building Dwelling ~arch543p/ of 91/6/2007 11:24 AM Building Dwelling Thinkingby Martin Heideggerfrom Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper Colophon Books, New York, what follows we shall try to think about Dwelling and Building . This Thinking about Building does notpresume to discover architectural ideas, let alone to give rules for Building . This venture in thought does notview Building as an art or as a technique of construction; rather it traces Building back into that domain towhich everything that is belongs. We ask:1. What is it to dwell?2. How does Building belong to Dwelling ? IWe attain to Dwelling , so it seems, only by means of Building . The latter, Building , has the former, Dwelling ,as its goal. Still, not every Building is a Dwelling . Bridges and hangars, stadiums and power stations arebuildings but not dwellings; railway stations and highways, dams and market halls are built, but they are notdwelling places.

2 Even so, these buildings are in the domain of our Dwelling . That domain extends over thesebuildings and yet is not limited to the Dwelling place. The truck driver is at home on the highway, but he doesnot have his shelter there; the working woman is at home in the spinning mill, but does not have her dwellingplace there; the chief engineer is at home in the power station, but he does not dwell there. These buildingshouse man. He inhabits them and yet does not dwell in them, when to dwell means merely that we takeshelter in them. In today's housing shortage even this much is reassuring and to the good; residential buildingsdo indeed provide shelter; today's houses may even be well planned, easy to keep, attractively cheap, open toair, light, and sun, but-do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee that Dwelling occurs in them? Yetthose buildings that are not Dwelling places remain in turn determined by Dwelling insofar as they serve man'sdwelling.

3 Thus Dwelling would in any case be the end that presides over all Building . Dwelling and buildingare related as end and means. However, as long as this is all we have in mind, we take Dwelling and buildingas two separate activities, an idea that has something correct in it. Yet at the same time by the means-endschema we block our view of the essential relations. For Building is not merely a means and a way towarddwelling -to build is in itself already to dwell. Who tells us this? Who gives us a standard at all by which wecan take the measure of the nature of Dwelling and Building ?It is language that tells us about the nature of a thing, provided that we respect language's own nature. In themeantime, to be sure, there rages round the earth an unbridled yet clever talking, writing, and broadcasting ofspoken words. Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remainsthe master of man. Perhaps it is before all else man's subversion of this relation of dominance that drives hisBuilding Dwelling ~arch543p/ of 91/6/2007 11:24 AMnature into alienation.

4 That we retain a concern for care in speaking is all to the good, but it is of no help to usas long as language still serves us even then only as a means of expression. Among all the appeals that wehuman beings, on our part, can help to be voiced, language is the highest and everywhere the , then, does Bauen, Building , mean? The Old English and High German word for Building , buan, means to dwell. This signifies: to remain, to stay in a place. The real meaning of the verb bauen, namely, to dwell, has been lost to us. But a covert trace of it has been preserved in the German word Nachbar, neighbor. The neighbor is in Old English the neahgehur; neah, near, and gebur, dweller. The Nachbar is the Nachgebur, theNachgebauer, the near-dweller, he who dwells nearby. The verbs buri, b ren, beuren, beuron, all signify Dwelling , the abode, the place of Dwelling . Now to be sure the old word buan not only tells us that bauen, to build, is really to dwell; it also gives us a clue as to how we have to think about the Dwelling it we speak of Dwelling we usually think of an activity that man performs alongside many other work here and dwell there.

5 We do not merely dwell-that would be virtual inactivity-we practice aprofession, we do business, we travel and lodge on the way, now here, now there. Bauen originally means to dwell. Where the word bauen still speaks in its original sense it also says how far the nature of dwellingreaches. That is, bauen, buan. bhu, beo are our word bin in the versions: ich bin, I am, du bist, you are, the imperative form bis, be. What then does ich bin mean? The old word bauen, to which the bin belongs, answers: ich bin, du bist mean: I dwell, you dwell. The way in which you are and I am, the manner in whichwe humans are on the earth , is Buan, Dwelling . To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal. itmeans to dwell. The old word bauen, which says that man is insofar as he dwells, this word barren however also means at the same time to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil, tocultivate the vine.

6 Such Building only takes care-it tends the growth that ripens into its fruit of its own in the sense of preserving and nurturing is not making anything. Shipbuilding and temple- Building ,on the other hand, do in a certain way make their own works. Here Building , in contrast with cultivating, is aconstructing. Both modes of Building - Building as cultivating, Latin colere, cultura, and Building as the raising up of edifices, aedificare -are comprised within genuine Building , that is, Dwelling . Building as Dwelling , thatis, as being on the earth , however, remains for man's everyday experience that which is from the outset"habitual"-we inhabit it, as our language says so beautifully: it is the Gewohnte. For this reason it recedes behind the manifold ways in which Dwelling is accomplished, the activities of cultivation and activities later claim the name of bauen, Building , and with it the fact of Building , exclusively forthemselves.

7 The real sense of bauen, namely Dwelling , falls into first sight this event looks as though it were no more than a change of meaning of mere terms. In truth,however, something decisive is concealed in it, namely, Dwelling is not experienced as man's being; dwellingis never thought of as the basic character of human language in a way retracts the real meaning of the word bauen, which is Dwelling , is evidence of the primal nature of these meanings; for with the essential words of language, their true meaning easily falls intooblivion in favor of foreground meanings. Man has hardly yet pondered the mystery of this process. Languagewithdraws from man its simple and high speech. But its primal call does not thereby become incapable ofspeech; it merely falls silent. Man, though, fails to heed this if we listen to what language says in the word bauen we hear three things:1. Building is really Dwelling is the manner in which mortals are on the Building as Dwelling unfolds into the buildingthat cultivates growing things and the Building that erectsbuildings.

8 If we give thought to this threefold fact, we obtain a clue and note the following: as long as we do not bear inmind that all Building is in itself a Dwelling , we cannot even adequately ask, let alone properly decide, what the Building of buildings might be in its nature. We do not dwell because we have built, but we build andBuilding Dwelling ~arch543p/ of 91/6/2007 11:24 AMhave built because we dwell, that is, because we are dwellers. But in what does the nature of dwellingconsist? Let us listen once more to what language says to us. The Old Saxon wuon, the Gothic wunian like the old word bauen, mean to remain, to stay in a place. But the Gothic wunian says more distinctly how this remaining is experienced. Wunian means: to be at peace , to be brought to peace , to remain in peace . The wordfor peace , Friede, means the free, das Frye, and fry means: preserved from harm and danger, preserved fromsomething, safeguarded. To free really means to spare.

9 The sparing itself consists not only in the fact that wedo not harm the one whom we spare. Real sparing is something positive and takes place when we leave something beforehand in its own nature, when we return it specifically to its being, when we "free" it in thereal sense of the word into a preserve of peace . To dwell, to be set at peace , means to remain at peace withinthe free sphere that safeguards each thing in its nature. The fundamental character of Dwelling is this sparingand preserving. It pervades Dwelling in its whole range. That range reveals itself to us as soon as we reflectthat human being consists in Dwelling and, indeed, Dwelling in the sense of the stay of mortals on the "on the earth " already means "under the sky." Both of these also mean "remaining before the divinities"and include a "belonging to men's being with one another." By a primal oneness the four- earth and sky,divinities and mortals-belong together in one.

10 earth is the serving bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in rock and water, rising up into plant andanimal. When we say earth , we are already Thinking of the other three along with it, but we give no thought tothe simple oneness of the sky is the vaulting path of the sun, the course of the changing, moon, the wandering glitter of the stars,the year's seasons and their changes, the light and dusk of day, the gloom and glow of night, the clemency andinclemency of the weather, the drifting clouds and blue depth of the ether. When we say sky, we are alreadythinking of the other three along with it, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. 0ut of the holy sway of the godhead, the godappears in his presence or withdraws into his concealment. When we speak of the divinities, we are alreadythinking of the other three along with them, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the mortals are the human beings.